Chapter 25
Soft. He was so fucking soft. I hadn’t expected him to be that fragile.
Even pulling my punches, he completely broke on my fists.
I’d swear he looked stronger than that in the locker room.
I expected him to put up at least a little bit of a fight.
He showed so much fighting spirit in VR, that I almost started to feel guilty that it was so one sided out of it.
Not only that, but he was tinier than I realized, too. His waist felt even smaller than it looked, and he weighed less than nothing on top of me.
Speaking of which, he was entirely too comfortable just sitting there like that.
Breaker or Seba would have reversed that move so fast, while he just sat on my hips like he was enjoying the ride.
Not to mention those little movements as he kept adjusting on top of me were hitting me in a way I would prefer not to acknowledge, even in my own head.
The dude was fucking weird.
I covered the lower half of my face with my hand, completely at a loss as to why I felt so warm.
If I had to give him credit for anything, it would be that he had more tenacity than self-preservation. Seba had been right about that. It was a valuable asset in a soldier though. Strength of will wasn’t something any amount of drills could teach.
I might also say he was brave, but I was still determining if he was showing me courage or stupidity.
I sighed as I stepped out of the dorms into the handful of hours of natural darkness.
I walked the silent expanse of campus until I got to the gate, then I opened the entryway using my credentials.
My first year at Astaroth, before I was allowed to leave the campus, had been hell.
Half the reason I’d been motivated to get to the highest ranks was just to gain this privilege to leave when I wanted to leave.
I was born on Saturn and, for better or for worse, I grew up here.
It felt wrong to be confined within my own hometown.
My rented storage pod was located in the back of the campus garage.
It was one of several hundred small cubic storage units within the compound, stacked three levels high and ten rows deep.
I activated the lift and unlocked the door with the chip in my palm, revealing my red and black light-cycle.
My machine had sleek, sharp lines and glowed softly while it was suspended over the charging panel.
I wanted to take her out for a ride, but it wasn’t a good night for that. I was too wound up. Nothing good happened with that much speed at my disposal when I was this out of my head.
I set up the cot that I kept stored against the wall, securing it in the small space next to my bike. This had been the best solution I could come up with after two months of this. Fortunately, no one else ever came into the garages at this hour, and even if they did, my storage unit was secure.
I didn’t know what to do at this point to fix this Vann situation.
It was pathetic that after all these years, I still couldn’t manage something as small and inconsequential as sleeping in a secure dorm room with a stranger.
I should have just thrown him out tonight, but he was so beat to shit, I couldn’t justify it.
If nothing else though, that was the last bit of confirmation I needed to know he wasn’t a spy.
Nothing about the way he fought felt dishonest. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they scrap.
He wasn’t strong, but he was clever in a way that reflected an unusual mix of resourcefulness and desperation.
He couldn’t help his build, but he could certainly learn how to work with what he had.
He was a quick study, making him much more difficult to predict than the mass of Mictlan trained recruits, and above all, he never backed down.
I’d sparred with a lot of men trained by the state, and none of them had eyes like that. Maybe that was why I found myself especially curious about what his life had been like on Protectorate 005 between the last war and now.
He had the look of someone who had seen things he’d never forget, and the pride of someone with something to prove.
I’d been pissed when he beat me in the simulation, but after going hand-to-hand with him, it was abundantly clear that it wasn’t a fluke. It felt crazy to admit that I saw something entirely too familiar in him, but I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t.
He’d told me he was a war orphan, and he told me he never got caught by the foster system, but that didn’t explain much. I couldn’t even say if that was an advantage or a disadvantage, really.
I deactivated my A2, and I examined the elaborate tattoo of snakes and chains that coiled around my forearms, crawling all the way from the crux of my elbow to my knuckles.
The once heavily burned skin never quite healed.
The tattoos were supposed to be a way of reclaiming that marred portion of my body, but no matter how much ink covered the surface, it never erased the damage done beneath it.
How many of us used Appearance Alteration Modules just to hide the truths we didn’t want to think about?
Was he using one, too?
I fluffed my pillow then laid down on the bed I’d commandeered from a secondhand store in town.
I’d started to get used to the too hard mattress, but my blanket and pillow were an improvement over standard issue.
I’d be hard pressed to say if it was better or worse than my normal bed overall, really.
Though sleeping in a storage unit, when I’d accomplished the hard fought battle of surviving this place for two years, clawing myself into one of the highest positions possible, was decidedly humiliating.
So you just live in a nightmare while you’re awake, he’d said, the conversation begrudgingly coming back to me for the umpteenth time.
I stared at my bare, unhidden knuckles again, where the image of thick, dark chains wrapped around the back of my hand in an ‘x.’ positioned under the snake’s head.
I bit my lower lip and dragged it slowly across my teeth.
What is the nightmare you’re living in Vann Callan? Have I earned a place in it, yet?
One heavy inhale and exhale, then I put on my headphones, and found Seba’s contact on my CHRONO.
Me: You awake?
Seba: You have two minutes.
I snorted. He was a man who valued his sleep like no other. He might be as delicate as Vann. Though I knew him well enough to know he was definitely serious about that time table.
Me: I’ll start a count down.
Seba: What’s on your mind. One minute, forty-three seconds
Me: Let’s do a joint training for a few weeks. I have some ideas.
Seba: Approved. Anything else? One minute, eight seconds.
Me: That I can cover with my remaining fifty-three seconds? Those parameters are limiting.
Seba: I’ve seen you change the tide of an entire battle in less than that. Thirty-two seconds.
I couldn’t stop the corners of my lips from lifting.
Me: Goodnight, Princess.
Seba: 10-29
The old radio code for ‘Time is up for contact’ was the most Seba way I knew to say “sweet dreams.”
That was easy. This should make Basics much more fun.
I deactivated my CHRONO and closed my eyes. Sleep was a luxury I needed tonight, but oh how I was looking forward to tomorrow.